Siobhan Coen: Unknown Knowns at Firstsite

15 August 2019

Siobhan Coen, Unknown Knowns (detail), 2017

Siobhan Coen’s new iteration of her Zabludowicz Collection Invitesexhibition is now on view at Colchester’s Firstsite. Unknown Knowns (2017), the installation presented for our 2018 show, features the voice of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the tone of an aesthetic philosopher he sets out his belief in the need to change how people see in order to create a new reality, thereby escaping the ‘failures of imagination’ that have dogged the past. As this audio plays, programmed pulses of RGB light saturate a large print of brightly coloured pixels. This abstract image is activated into an all-encompassing and constantly shifting visual plane that is both seductive and destabilising.